Whether you’re a pool shark, a mark, or a stakehorse, Brooklyn’s pool halls are the best place to play a couple rounds. The stereotypes of the past — think Minnesota Fats playing in haze of cigarette smoke and spilled beer — are gone, replaced by people that may not know the rules, but are having fun.

It’s still the same game of geometry, concentration, angles, and good aim in a dimly lit place, but now, billiards’ reputation has a clean slate.

“Thirty years ago, my dad never let me go into pool halls alone,” said Ross Banfield, who runs the largest amateur pool league in Brooklyn. “Now, it’s my full-time job.”

Banfield spends almost every night of the year pushing a cue across felt somewhere in Brooklyn. Through his the American Poolplayers Association, with its 1,500 members, Banfield has played on every respectable (and, let’s face it, unrespectable) table from Greenpoint to Gravesend.

With his help, The Brooklyn Paper created a list of the six best places to pot some balls.

The big time

Brooklyn has many mega-pool halls, but Platinum Café and Billiards in Sunset Park is the biggest of them all, with thousands of square feet of space, 36 tables, a bar, a full kitchen, and a roof deck.

But Platinum also offers that bastardization of good ol’ American pool: snooker. That’s the high-class British cousin of billiards, featuring 15 red balls, six balls of different colors and a very specific order for potting them all. (It’s a fun game — if you’re feeling Cockney.)

“We are the biggest hall in Brooklyn, that’s all we have to say,” said James Lee, a manager. “If you’re British, American, or a Brooklynite, this place is for you.”

Ocean’s 8 in Park Slope fully demonstrates the transformation of the sport that followed the release of “The Color of Money” in 1986. As a result of Tom Cruise and Paul Newman shooting rack after rack (and always getting the girl, by the way), pool took a huge leap in popularity that encouraged old-style pool halls to get with the smoke-free times.

At Ocean’s 8, that means a full sports bar, plus 27 pool tables, six Ping Pong tables, three air hockey tables, and two bowling lanes.

“I remember the real pool hall; if you talked, you were thrown out,” he said. “But the game has changed and we had to change with the times or pack up. You can bring four people here and every one of them can play a different sport, eat, and drink. In golf, they call it a hole-in-one, but here I call it an all-in-one.”

To celebrate the joint’s 20th anniversary, everything from billiards to burgers is 20 percent off on Tuesdays for the rest of the year.